The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded by the Atlantic Pact signed in 1949, is seventy years old. Like the United Nations (UN), like the European integration, its creation dates back to the reorganization of international relations after the Second World War. It concerns both processes: the United Nations because it is based on the collective self-defence of its members provided for in Article 51 of the Charter; and the construction of Europe because it concerns primarily the security of Western Europe, which is subject to military and political pressure from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the socialist camp.
NATO is, however, moving away from the ideals of the UN and from collective security with a universal dimension, which was based on a close understanding between the United States and the USSR, of which the Yalta Conference (1945) was the matrix. The rapid failure of this endeavour after the end of the war, the Iron Curtain between Western and Eastern Europe, the birth of the two opposing blocs, led to the creation of a defensive military alliance which was to unite the United States and the European countries threatened by Soviet expansionism. NATO has made it possible for European integration to develop without being hindered by the concern for the military security of the founding countries, because the United States is called upon to provide for it.
It is the European countries that are most interested in this protection and that are asking for it. The initial participation in the Atlantic Pact and in NATO, however, covers only partially that of the nascent European integration. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) did not initially belong to it, whereas, in addition to the United States and Canada, there were countries outside the original European Treaty, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, 1951), such as Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom. This composition was then explained by the first Secretary General of NATO: the purpose of the pact was to keep the United States in Europe, to keep the Soviet Union at a distance, and to leave the FRG under domination.
Before the decisive turning point for the Organisation, namely the demise of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of the socialist camp and the USSR in 1991, NATO had experienced some extensions: Greece and Turkey in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982 were added to the 12 founding members. There is nothing comparable, however, with the massive enlargement which, in a few years at the turn of the 20th century, almost doubled the number of members, now 30, pending some future accessions, perhaps those of the Balkan countries which for the time being remain excluded-Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
NATO has thus had at least two lives, the first as part of the bloc policy until the demise of the USSR, and the second in the three decades that have followed it up to the present day.? During the first, the situation was clear and clear-cut. Above all anti-Soviet, NATO was a shield in Europe against the supposed aggressive intentions of the USSR, and its effectiveness was generally satisfactory. It was of a preventive nature, since the United Nations did not have to intervene militarily and its function was primarily a deterrent.
NATO has not defined its role in the current international disorder.
The second life, the next thirty years, is much more complex and uncertain. President Emmanuel Macron declared, in the Economist on 7 November 2019, that NATO is in a state of "brain death", a formula that has been ignored rather than contested. The Organisation and its members have opposed silence and inertia, but it is clear that NATO has not defined its role in the current international disorder. If it has been an effective shield for 40 years, has it not become a strategic sieve, ineffective in the face of new security threats such as international terrorism, societal conflicts, mass migration, cybersecurity in particular? On this last point, the Tallinn Manual, prepared in 2013 by NATO-mandated experts, makes only a limited contribution.
The strategic concepts that define NATO's priorities and objectives always seem to be behind events, while its reactive practice does not respond to any organized purpose.? Have the massive enlargements to Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the incorporation into it of most of the former socialist countries, including secessionist Soviet republics, not weakened its cohesion and obscured its aims without increasing its capabilities? These are, at least, the tempting reproaches of the Organization.
It must be said, however, that its survival stems from the inability of Europeans to organise their own security system after the Cold War. The double failure of the "common house" advocated by Mikhail Gorbachev and of the European Confederation proposed by François Mitterrand, the weakness of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE became OSCE in 1994), and the shortcomings of the European countries in the face of the break-up of Yugoslavia have left room for NATO. It is now faced with various questions, which can be grouped around three registers: the distinction between the Atlantic Alliance and NATO; the hesitations between concepts and practices; and relations between NATO and the European Union.
